Sunday, December 21, 2008

Wikileaks Threatened with Criminal Prosecution by the BND

The global whistleblowing website Wikileaks has been threatened with criminal prosecution by the head of Germany's spy agency Ernst Uhrlau, President of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), if they do not remove all "files or reports related to the BND".

According to a Wikileakspress release, "the spy chief claims to have already engaged the BND's legal machinery."

Threats against the journalists were triggered according to Wikileaks, by the publication of my article, "The End of the Affair? The BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State," (Antifascist Calling, December 7, 2008) on their website.

I did not seek to become part of the story, nevertheless Uhrlau's threats cannot go unchallenged. The censorship and prior restraint he demands are toxic to a free society.

In addition to my piece, the "files or reports" which the German spook insists they remove is a 2005, 25-page BND dossier on corrupt senior Kosovo politicians as well as unredacted pages from the Bundestag's 2006 Schaefer Report pertaining to illegal BND domestic operations targeting journalists and left-wing political organizations in Germany.

In denouncing this unwarranted provocation Wikileaks said: "The BND, like the CIA, is forbidden by law to engage in domestic activities. Yet the threats, which were made in German as well as in English, hold no legal power outside of Germany. They must be assumed to be an attempt to engage Wikileaks via its German component--or does Mr. Uhrlau suggest it is now BND policy to kidnap foreign journalists and try them before German courts?"

My article explored the parapolitical connections to a recent scandal in which three BND officers working under deep cover, were arrested and deported from Kosovo. What sparked the scandal was the arrest of one of the operatives when he was caught photographing the headquarters of the European Union Special Representative in Pristina, bombed under mysterious circumstances November 14.

The affair exposed the agency's extensive covert operations in Kosovo through a cut-out, the "private security firm" Logistics-Coordination & Assessment Services (LCAS). Information on LCAS was in the public domain after exposure by German investigative reporters writing in Spiegel International. Compromising notebooks and electronic files were subsequently seized by Kosovan authorities.

While the "evidence" presented linking the agents to the blast was slim at best, one cannot rule out that Thaci's intelligence service, with prompting by some "other government agency (OGA)," a foreign service with close ties to the corrupt statelet perhaps, exploited the agents' poor tradecraft to roll-up their operation because of fears of what they might have discovered.

I speculated whether the operatives were convenient foils of a plot hatched by the Kosovan government in cahoots with the CIA over BND disclosure of extensive links amongst Thaci and his henchmen to international criminal syndicates involved in the global drugs, arms and sordid trade in human beings. Revelations which Thaci and the CIA would prefer never come to light. I speculated that one motive for rolling-up the BND's operation may have been that the seized operative's notebook contained information that Camp Bondsteel continues to serve as a CIA "black site" where prisoners are illegally detained and tortured.

Additionally, I cited Wikileaksdocuments that revealed the BND's illegal manipulation of the media to influence domestic coverage of the spy agency through the infiltration of Focus Magazine as well as intelligence operations that sought to gain knowledge of journalists' confidential sources.

Wikileaks German correspondent Daniel Schmitt and Investigative Editor Julian Assange, said that the Schaefer Report, "in general shows the extent to which the collaboration of journalists with intelligence agencies has become common and to what dimensions consent is manufactured in the interests of those involved."

Following Schmitt and Assange's reporting, one must now add the criminal lengths that unaccountable spy agencies will go to prevent journalists from exposing their dirty and illegal operations.

Wikileaks also disclosed and posted a document that revealed the IP addresses "of an internally distributed mail from German telecommunications company T-Systems (Deutsche Telekom)" containing over two dozen IP "address ranges" used by the BND.

I cited this document in relation to a Berlin internet prostitution service ("Belle-Escort.de") and said the following: "While the document does not spell out who was running the sex-for-hire website, one can't help but wonder whether Balkan-linked organized crime syndicates, including Kosovan and Albanian sex traffickers are working in tandem with the BND in return for that agency turning a blind eye to the sordid trade in kidnapped women."

That question, as well as many others, is still unanswered.

My article cited open-source media reports from Spiegel International, the World Socialist Website, Mother Jones Magazine, as well as the work of scholars and investigative journalists Misha Glenny, Christopher Deliso, Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Dale Scott. Are journalists and researchers now expected to submit copy to spooky censors for appropriate redactions before publishing their findings? I think not.

I stand by my conclusions and denounce Uhrlau's threats as an attack on the rights of investigative- and citizen journalists to reveal information that agencies such as the BND would rather never see the light of day.

Wikileaks should be commended, not attacked, for their brave documentary project and supported by everyone who upholds the rule of law, a free press and an open, democratic society.

As the heroic Israeli journalist Amira Hass told The Independent's Robert Fisk "our job is to monitor the centers of power," not shill for them.

About Me

A researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, I am the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.